Beijing
(China Daily/ANN)- As industries that allegedly practice animal cruelty have
tried prying open the Chinese market, while they meet resistance in other
countries, Chinese consumers are pushing back.
On
Nov 19, Chinese conservationists and animal rights groups staged an awards
ceremony for a poster-design competition oriented around protesting seal
products. NGO representatives, professors and celebrities attended.
China
Animal Protection Media Saloon founder Zhang Dan points to sales of seal
products and the introduction of the United States rodeo as representatives of
cruel to animal industries trying to expand in China.
"It's
a trend that industries involved in animal cruelty look toward China's massive
market potential as their sales slump elsewhere," Zhang says.
The
Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail quotes seal-oil supplement manufacturer
DPA Industries' chairman Wayne MacKinnon as saying, "The Chinese eat
anything. And they simply don't understand why you would put one animal above
another."
Other
foreign reports say the Chinese have no regard for animal welfare and no
relevant legislation.
"Because
of prejudice, they believe most Chinese don't care about animals and eat
anything," Zhang says.
"But
they're perfectly wrong."
The
Chinese government announced in 2010 the suspension for further review of a
trade deal to import Canadian seal products.
Pressure
from animal rights groups led to the indefinite postponement of the rodeo
scheduled for Oct 1 at Beijing's Bird's Nest.
But
seals have become the movement's current focus.
The
backlash against the Canadian trade in seal products comes after Panjin Spotted
Seals Protection Volunteer Association founder Tian Jiguang led a successful
online campaign in April to reroute a coastal highway that would have disrupted
the spotted seals' Northeast China breeding grounds.
The
recent award ceremony featured a film by the event's organizer, the NGO Green
Beagle, showing commercial seal hunting on the Canadian ice floes. The film
showed the slaughter of mature seals and their pups with rifles and heavy
wooden clubs topped with hammerheads called "hakapiks".
The
bloody footage was shot by Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of the Humane
Society International Canada (HSI Canada), who also joined the Beijing event.
Aldworth
has spent the past decade observing Canada's commercial seal hunts firsthand.
She has escorted more than 100 scientists, parliamentarians and journalists to
the ice floes to witness the slaughter.
"The
attitude of Chinese consumers is crucial," Aldworth says.
"Now,
you have the opportunity to terminate the massacre of seal pups in Canada. You
are at a crossroads to open to the dying cruel industry, or stand with other
countries to ban the seal products."
More
than 30 countries and regions, including the United States, the European Union
and Russia, have banned imports of Canadian seal products.
"We've
endeavored to protect the spotted seals in China and have won support from our
government," Tian says.
"The
import of seal products from other countries won't work in China."
Canada's
controversial seal hunting industry has been in decline because of
international pressure.
The
number of harp seals slaughtered in the spring of 2011 in Canada was about
37,917 - less than 10 percent of the 400,000 quota.
The
slump is partly because of the 2009 EU ban on imports but is also because the
ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence off Canada's eastern coast is thinner and less
stable.
The
industry is small in Canada and generates between $10 million and $20 million a
year.
But
it's politically sensitive, because many of the 6,000 remaining seal hunters
are from Inuit communities, which have hunted the mammal for centuries and
perhaps millennia.
In
September 2010, the European General Court rejected a bid by Canada's largest
Inuit organization to challenge the EU's ban on seal products.
The
Canadian government recognizes that thin ice - climatically and politically -
has caused the harvests to decrease by about 75 percent over the past five
years to 70,000.
The
market price for pelts has fallen, too.
The
China Chamber of International Commerce staged a March 28 seminar on the seal
trade.
HIS'
China policy consultant Li Jianqiang said the Canadian government had
"rushed" to release the "good news" about the trade deal
with China to enable politicians to win votes.
"We
know that China is a huge potential market," Gail Shea, then Canada's
minister of fisheries and oceans, said during a trip to China in January 2010.
During
this year's visit, Shea promoted seal-fur products at the 37th China Fur and
Leather Products Fair.
About
40 animal rights groups responded to her actions with a protest letter.
One
activist attended the fair with a banner pinned to his back that read:
"Chinese people do not welcome Canadian seal products!"
But despite
activists' objections to seal products, oil, hats and wallets made from the
animals are still sold on China's largest online shopping website, Taobao. A
seal leather belt costs from $100 to $220.
Wang
Ru in Beijing/China Daily | ANN
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